Listen: Love Endureth

Love Abide: CD

Panufinik compositions on the theme of "love"

Love Endureth is featured on the first track of a CD entitled Love Abide, performed by VOCES 8 and the London Mozart Players, with whom Roxanna Panufnik is Composer-in-Association. Audio clips are available on the Love Abide website. The CD also features two Masses, a Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, as well as settings of texts from 1 Corinthians 13.

For information on performing this work or obtaining a perusal score, please contact SDG.

About the composer

Roxanna Panufnik has written a wide range of pieces, including opera, ballet, music theatre, choral works, chamber compositions and music for film and television. Among her most widely known works is the Westminster Mass, commissioned for Westminster Cathedral Choir. Recent premieres include her oratorio Dance of Life for multiple choirs and the Tallinn Philharmonic Orchestra, and Four World Seasons for violinist Tasmin Little and the London Mozart Players, which was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, launching their Music Nation Weekend, celebrating the 2012 Olympics.

Panufnik is the inaugural Associate Composer with the London Mozart Players, 2012 - 2015, and her compositions have been recorded by many companies, including Warner Classics and EMI Classics.

"Roxanna Panufnik is one of the finest contemporary vocal composers around. No matter how demanding the subject matter, she always seems to find a way to set words that sit hand-in-glove with the text."—Julian Haylock, International Record Review

Nave of the Westminster Cathedral, the largest Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales

Roxanna Panufnik is one of the UK's most popular composers, and her works strike a deep emotional chord with audiences everywhere. The world premiere of her setting of Psalm 135 (136), Love Endureth, commissioned by Soli Deo Gloria for the Psalms Project, was no exception.

As Peter Bannister, SDG's Psalms Project Director, reported from the 2012 world premiere performance at Westminster Cathedral in London, "Talking with people at a small reception afterwards, it was clear that I was not the only one to have found hearing Love Endureth intensely moving, and to come away from the Cathedral changed in some small way, sensing that something had happened during the liturgy. Which surely has to be one of the hallmarks of authentic worship.” (For more of Peter Bannister's reflections on the Panufnik premiere, see his blog post The death of classical music? In search of vital signs (1). )"

Drawing on the advice of Jewish music expert Dr. Alexander Knapp, cantor Jaclyn Chernett and musicologist Victor Tunkel, Panufnik selected extracts of Sephardic Jewish chant from Psalm 136 (135) and incorporated a Hebrew version of one of the responses: "For forever His Mercy": Ki L'olam chasdo.

Westminster Cathedral Choir

While it might seem unusual to take Jewish musical ideas into a Roman Catholic cathedral, Panufnik is the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Polish Catholic father, the composer Sir Andrzej Panufnik. "For her, the co-existence of religions and cultures is an essential part of her identity." (See Jessica Duchen's article "Why her music is a religious experience, three times over," The Jewish Chronicle Online)

The première of Love Endureth was performed by the Westminster Cathedral Choir under the direction of Master of Music Martin Baker. The Westminster Cathedral Choir is acclaimed as one of the world’s great choirs and, since its foundation in 1903, has occupied a unique and enviable position at the forefront of English church music.The diligence of the singers in preparation (men and boys, some as young as 8) was impressive, and they were clearly energized by the experience. The boys even lined up afterward to get the composer’s autograph!